Opposition parties are threatening a new contempt charge that could paralyze Ontario’s legislature unless the government stops “stonewalling” a probe into power plants cancelled before the 2011 election.

That raises the spectre of a showdown, halting the daily question period and debates on bills, like the one that prompted former premier Dalton McGuinty to suspend parliament last October.

The only way to avoid it is for Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority government to back down, allowing MPPs on a committee probing the scandal to ask about questionable emails from top Liberals. Those emails urge the Speaker of the legislature to reverse a September 2012 ruling ordering the release of secret documents on the plants in Mississauga and Oakville.

“An attempt to intimidate the Speaker is contempt of the legislature” and a bid to “hijack democracy,” Conservative House leader Jim Wilson told reporters Wednesday, serving notice of his contempt motion for the legislature’s return Sept. 9.

NDP House Leader Gilles Bisson said the government’s best bet is to permit the questions rejected by the committee chair, Liberal MPP Shafiq Qaadri, in the last two hearings.

“We could either do that or we can go back to another long debate (on contempt) in the legislature,” said Bisson, who presented his case in a letter to Wynne. “If the premier . . . forces the legislature in that direction, that will be her decision.”

Government House leader John Milloy said the Liberals have already expanded the scope of the committee once but added, “We can sit down and talk about how to move forward.”

At issue is a decision last week by Qaadri, who heads the committee investigating the plant closures, which cost $585 million and prompted opposition charges tax money was used to save Liberal seats in the 2011 vote.

Qaadri ruled MPPs cannot ask questions about emails from senior McGuinty aides last September that pressed Speaker Dave Levac to change a ruling that found then-energy minister Chris Bentley in a breach of parliamentary privilege for refusing to release secret documents on plant closings for four months.

Those emails were released to the committee last month and their authors should be subject to questioning on them, opposition parties say. Qaadri, advised by a lawyer employed by the legislature, said the emails are outside the committee’s mandate and denies his ruling was partisan.

“The chair is stonewalling our efforts to get to the truth,” said Wilson, noting opposition MPPs want to find out if Levac — the Liberal MPP for Brant chosen by all parties as the legislature’s referee — was threatened with any sanctions.

The emails were written by former McGuinty aide Laura Miller, who said her colleague Dave Gene “is putting the member from Brant (on notice that we need better here,” and former Liberal campaign director Don Guy, who said: “Speaker needs to follow up on his prima facie finding and change his mind.”

Miller and Guy, who have testified before the legislative committee in the last two weeks, said they feared Levac’s ruling could trigger an election and denied any attempts to intimidate him.

Levac said in a statement recently that their attempts did not change his mind, but Wilson said that doesn’t matter.

“The issue here is not whether the Speaker was intimidated, it is about whether an attempt was made,” he wrote in his two-page letter to Levac.

“Parliamentary authority explicitly states that even an attempt to intimidate the Speaker is a matter that needs to be investigated by the legislature.”

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